Profile

Paul joined Birkbeck in 2007. Prior to joining Birkbeck, he was a Reader at the Policy Research Institute, University of Wolverhampton. Previously Paul has taught at the University of East London and Buckinghamshire New University. He is on the editorial boards of ‘City’ and ‘Community, Work and Family’.

Research and Teaching

Research Interests

I am an urbanist whose research interests span geography, sociology and social policy. My over-arching research focus is the inter-relationship between social inequalities, space and place, especially in global cities and their hinterlands. This includes the following themes:

Social housing and urban regeneration.

Neighbourhoods and communities.

The 2012 London Olympics and the regeneration of East London.

Suburbanisation and the suburbs (British Academy, Small Research Grant, 2012, SG112360: Residential Mobility, Housing and Belonging in the London Suburbs).

Research Roles

Department of GEDS seminar series, Birkbeck – Convenor.

Birkbeck Institute for Social Research – Steering Committee.

Birkbeck Research in Representations of Kinship and Community – Steering Committee.

Living Maps – Steering Committee.

Highbury Group on Housing Delivery, University of Westminster – Member.

Teaching

I convene the following undergraduate modules:

Cities and Urban Inequalities (level 6)

Research Project (level 6)

Literature Review (level 6)

Environment, Economy and Society in Europe (level 5)

Human Geography: Space and Place in the Contemporary World (level 4)

PhD/MPhil. Supervision

I currently supervise the following students:

Eric Carlin: ‘Resilience in Teenagers at Risk of Social Exclusion in a Deprived Edinburgh Neighbourhood’.

Piero Corcillo: ‘Olympic Games Housing and the Athletes Village Redevelopment: A Comparison between London and Turin’.

David Tross: ‘Happiness and Well-being in England’.

Previous PhD students include:

Peter Fussey: ‘Installing CCTV: A Study of the Networks of Surveillance Policy’.

Anthony Gunter: ‘Can’t Blame the Youth: An Ethnographic Account of Black Youth in an East London Neighbourhood’.

Keelin Howard: ‘Welfare as Control: Contradiction, Dilemma and Compromise in the Everyday Support of Asylum Seekers in the UK after the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act’.

Ruth Rogers: ‘The Ethical Techniques of the Self and the Social Security Discourse of the Jobseeker’.

Kennelly, J. and Watt, P. (2013) Restricting the public in public space: the London 2012 Olympic Games, hyper-securitization and marginalized youth, Sociological Research Online 18(2). http://www.socresonline.org.uk/18/2/19.html

Watt, P. (2006) Respectability, roughness and ‘race’: neighbourhood place images and the making of working-class social distinctions in London, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30(4): 776-797.

Gifford, C., Watt, P., Clark, W. and Koster, S. (2005) Negotiating participation and power in a school setting: the implementation of active citizenship within the undergraduate sociology curriculum, LATISS - Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences 2(3): 175-190.

Gunter, A. and Watt, P. (2010) ‘Grafting, going to college and working on road: youth transitions and cultures in an East London neighbourhood’, in: R. MacDonald, T. Shildrick and S. Blackman (eds.) Young People, Class and Place. London: Routledge.

Watt, P., Gifford, C. and Koster, S. (2008) Working with schools: active citizenship for undergraduate social science students, in University Life Uncovered: Making Sense of the Student Experience. Southampton: Higher Education Academy SWAP, University of Southampton.

Watt, P. (2008) Moving to a better place? Geographies of aspiration and anxiety in the Thames Gateway, in: P. Cohen and M.J. Rustin (Eds.), London’s Turning: The Making of Thames Gateway. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Watt, P. (2007) From the dirty city to the spoiled suburb, in: B. Campkin and R. Cox (Eds.), Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination. London: I.B. Tauris.

‘Housing Market Restructuring and Inequalities in London and the UK’, RC21 Unequal Cities and the Political Economy of Housing session, XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology, Yokohama, July 13-19, 2014.

‘Displacing the locals? The 2012 Olympics, lower-income residents and the gentrification of East London’, International Conference: Olympic Legacies and Impacts of Mega-Events on Cities, University of East London, 4-6 September 2013.